“There are those who believe that life here began out there: far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive…somewhere beyond the heavens.”

I was only in single digits when it was first broadcast, but I’ll never forget watching the original Battlestar Galactica television series. Most science fiction programs like Star Trek, The Invaders, and even My Favorite Martian were relegated to UHF back then. A high-budget network television show with dogfighting spaceships, scary robots, and aliens was special. Even the comic books were cool. We all wanted to be like Starbuck or Apollo. Adama was the wise grandfather we wish we had. And who didn’t want to pilot a Colonial Viper?

As I watch it today, Battlestar Galactica‘s flaws become more evident. It could be that it’s a different viewing experience when you’re not seated six inches from a wood-framed color TV, wide-eyed and absorbing uncounted roentgens of radiation. Or maybe it’s got real problems. Nevertheless, it’s still an entertaining program, and worth talking about. We can discuss the 2003 remake at a later time. I’ve got all the DVDs.

The most striking thing about the show when you first watch it is the music. Both sad and stirring, it fits perfectly within the theme of embattled humanity fleeing for its life across the blackness of space. It conveys both loss and dignity, grief and unbowed heads.

Casting and performances were uneven, but hit the mark where it counted. Lorne Greene inhabited Adama, and to those of us who never watched Greene in Bonanza (why would you when Star Trek reruns were on), he nevertheless became a favorite actor. A great leader of men. His rich, deep voice conveyed both wisdom and authority, and he was very rarely wrong about anything. You’d follow Adama to the end of the universe if he asked, and would be honored by the request every centon. Dirk Benedict as Starbuck was the perfect lovable rogue: smoked cigars, drank, played cards, joked, womanized, feared commitment but possessed fierce loyalty, always with an eye for the main chance. You rooted for him, or for Richard Hatch as Apollo, the strait-laced fighter pilot who always did the right thing, and did it by the book. The other characters were, for the most part, interchangeable except for Herbert Jefferson Jr as Boomer and John Colicos as the evil Count Baltar. No one else stood out.

The child character Boxey was a problem. His pet robot dog Muffit was a problem. Even as a small boy I hated them. Perhaps I was born a cynic, but back then I knew they’d only been put into the show to cater to young people like me. Perhaps if Muffit wasn’t so obviously a performer in a robot dog suit or if Boxey hadn’t been so irritating they might have been better received. As it was, they were an unwelcome distraction that took you out of the show.

There’s a fundamental decency to the characters, themes, and storytelling that’s completely absent from today’s television fare. The people of the 12 Colonies believed in God. They prayed to Him, these ancient, starfaring people who had a different Bible, a different set of legends and heroes. They had marriage and codes of honor and were appalled at the necessity, when all else failed, of putting their women on the front lines of combat in Colonial Vipers. The miniseries’s pilot, Saga of a Star World, reflects late 1970’s Cold War concerns, with the Cylons filling in for the Soviets as a dreadful, implacable enemy. This Cold War comparison becomes even more stark when Sire Uri, a leader among the surviving humans, suggests that they should dispose of all of their weapons to show the Cylons that humans are no longer a threat. The Cylons would presumably call off the war and sue for peace: a perfect metaphor for the demand for nuclear disarmament in the face of Soviet aggression. We know how that ended up in the real world, and the people of Battlestar Galactica were at least as wise as us in refusing Sire Uri’s suggestion.

The special effects were good for the time. A common complaint was the frequent reuse of certain special effects shots: dogfights, ships exploding, Vipers leaving the flight bay, etc. I already mentioned the unfortunate Muffit. Still, they don’t get in the way of the plot. The Cylons were creepy, with their absurdly shiny bodies and that red, endlessly scanning eye. Despite the uniformity of their electronic voices, they’re not emotionless robots: they experience anger, concern, and fear. Some even carry swords. There’s a Cylon culture buried somewhere deep in their reptilian past, but we don’t see much of it. Lucifer, Count Baltar’s erstwhile dogsbody, has a disquietingly effete, refined voice, but his sparkling robot head is too small for his body and he’s difficult to be afraid of. All in all, Battlestar Galactica‘s illusion is imperfect, but functional.

Unfortunately, the show had problems throughout its run, with high budgets, terrible mid-season episodes, and dwindling viewership. It didn’t last past a single season. Galactica 1980 failed to recapture the magic and didn’t last long, either.

Nevertheless, it still holds up. If barely.

“Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, the Galactica, leads a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest: a shining planet known as Earth.”

My recent illness found me incapable of doing anything but lying on the sofa (or a hospital bed) and suffering. It was worst in the early stages, when a non-stop headache made every waking moment a misery. I’m still not 100% now, and must spend part of the day reclining, but every day I thank God I’m not the me from a few weeks ago. That was awful.

So what do you do when you can’t do anything? You watch television, of course. In the last three weeks I’ve watched more television than I have in the last fifteen years. This is not a thing I’m proud of, but you do what you have to to get through. Pleasantly, there is more than enough TV available on Netflix to keep one occupied until Kingdom Come, more or less, so finding something to watch is never a problem.

What follows is a general rundown of the television shows I’ve binge-watched lately. Despite my illness, I watched them with a clear head and an eye for quality. There may be some minor spoilers here and there, but if you’re a grown-up, you can deal.

Black Mirror: Progressive millennials love this show. (I don’t look down on millennials like many Gen-Xers do; our military is filled to the brim with millennials and it’s the greatest fighting force on Earth.) It’s supposed to be a Twilight Zone-esque program focusing on technology running amok and its effects on society. Mostly science fiction with some horror and satire elements. Produced in the UK. Decent special effects, decent acting. It’s horrible. Unwatchable for anyone who isn’t stuck in a hospital bed. Imagine what scares your least-thoughtful progressive friend the most about something like social media, race relations, or surveillance cameras, and Black Mirror has made an episode about it. Every episode is predictable, tedious in its preachiness, and unbelievably dreary. This is what happens when the humorless, identity politics-obsessed social justice crowd makes TV for other humorless social justice warriors: a bland, pathetic, intelligence-insulting mess that gets by on intention over substance. Avoid at all costs. It’s possible that my recovery would be going faster if I hadn’t subjected myself to this waste of time.

Safe: After Black Mirror I wanted to watch something with some complexity. Safe, a suburban mystery-thriller, looked interesting: a murdered teen, a dad looking for his daughter, family secrets, some law enforcement intrigue (who doesn’t love that). Not only that, but I’d be treated to Michael C. Hall of Dexter fame aping an English accent the whole show. So it was a shoe-in. Overall, I liked it. Oh, the plot only moved forward because the characters made some inexplicable decisions, and Hall’s English accent was entirely unnecessary, but it was decent. Keeps you watching if you don’t want to think too deeply. If nothing else, watch it for Nigel Lindsay’s portrayal of Jojo, a wealthy, buffoonish business owner: he’s hysterically funny and steals every scene he’s in. They wisely use him in small bits, but he makes the role invaluable.

Fauda Season Two: You’ve seen season one, haven’t you? If not, you are in for a treat. It’s a show about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that tells the story from both sides. The Palestinians are portrayed accurately: evil, amoral, and disgusting, but it’s fascinating to see them justify their atrocities and how they carry them out. The good guys, the Israelis, are depicted as being in the IDF’s Duvdevan Unit, a counter-terrorism force. (Several years ago I worked with Garrett Machine, a former Duvdevan Unit member, on an instructional video on Combat First Aid.) The show’s a fascinating look at the Middle East, at life in the Palestinian territories, and life in Israel. I highly recommend both seasons.

Altered Carbon: Sci-fi action. I couldn’t make it through the first episode. Nothing made sense, everyone behaved stupidly, and I didn’t care about anything that happened to anybody. James Purefoy couldn’t even save it.

This was the season where nothing happened. None of the principal characters changed in any significant way, and many of the same events from the first season repeated themselves in this one. Just like in season one, a new girl (Max) enters the friend group and causes chaos among the pre-adolescent protagonists. Will Byers is once again held prisoner by a horrific, otherworldly force, and is freed only at the very end. Once again Will’s mom trashes the whole house to solve Will’s terrible mystery. Nobody died except for characters introduced in this season, so it was a wash (I was kind of hoping that Bob Newby would turn out to be Soviet spy, but that didn’t happen). We learned very little about the main monster, the smoke-thing looming menacingly over the town like a post-Christmas credit card statement. Apparently it’s referred to by the writers as The Sentient, which is about as silly a name for something as The Situation.

It took an entire plot-miring episode, The Lost Sister, to give Eleven a badly-needed makeover. Why does Eleven’s left nostril bleed when she uses her powers? Because both nostrils bleed when she really, really uses her powers, that’s why. John Byers and Nancy Wheeler finally hook up despite a lack of chemistry that I can’t believe isn’t deliberate. The introduction of Max (a diversity pick? I ask, you decide) diluted the friend group (“the party”) such that Mike Wheeler ended up becoming entirely unnecessary the entire season, which was a shame: the show needed his vulnerability and childish stubbornness. Mr. Clarke, one of the only grown-ups in the show who wasn’t full of shit, was pretty much written out of the season, replaced by moderately-amusing conspiracy nut Murray Bauman.

Steve Harrington stepped up as a decent, even heroic character, even if he had to be saved by a little girl from being beaten to death by Billy, the unnecessary antagonist. (Note that Billy is the only human bad guy in the show; Paul Reiser’s ineffectual, uninteresting replacement of Matthew Modine eliminated all major human antagonists.) Dustin turned out a bit more likable than expected. Lucas wasn’t tested enough in this season to make him interesting, though his little sister was hysterical.

So what’s next for season 3? More teenage psychics, no doubt. #8’s Shadow-like powers were very neat, if not terribly well thought-out. What is the Upside-Down, anyway? It can’t just be a whole other universe that just happens to have its own rules and ecosystem; it’s clearly a horrific reflection of our own. What does The Sentient/Situation want? Will Hopper and Dustin suffer ill effects from breathing in the demonic farts of the disgusting tunnel-anuses? Will the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who this show is clearly aimed at get their fill of 80’s nostalgia in depictions of old-style candy bar wrappers and coin-op arcade games?

Thanksgiving’s almost here, so between holiday preparations and family time I won’t have much more than a book review next week. Don’t worry: you’ll like both the review and the book. For now, some odds and ends.

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Regular readers know that I’m an avid reader of news and politics, as they’re informed by our common culture. If you don’t like how politics are currently being practiced, all you have to do is glance at the coarsening of our culture to see why. It’s not a coincidence, for example, that Hollywood bigwig Harvey Weinstein is (or was) a big political donor and bundler. With that in mind, the sickening allegations made by multiple women against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore are too big an issue to tackle in hot takes and sound bites, despite multiple attempts to do so by moral preeners on every side of the political aisle. Nobody has a right to be believed. Nobody. This includes accusers and defendants, particularly politicians. You may have a right to be heard, but you don’t have a right to be believed, no matter what charges you levy. I don’t believe the word of anyone I don’t personally know or vouch for, but I do believe in facts and evidence. The Washington Post‘s institutional loathing of conservatives like Moore make these allegations difficult to take at face value. On the other hand, why would these women lie? And Moore’s own demurrals seem pro forma, at best. It’s ugly and horrible across the board, but that’s our politics. And until we do the hard but necessary work of fixing our culture, that’s how our politics will stay. Let’s focus on what we can prove rather than prosecuting defendants in the Court of Social Media.

Exit question: our news media has become so hostile to the values of anyone not living along the coasts that many in Alabama will support Moore no matter what is uncovered about him, just to spite them. Is there any way this can change?

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The issue of NFL players kneeling for the National Anthem is unbelievably stupid, but there’s an element that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t matter any longer if the NFL mandates players standing for the national anthem. Whether these overpaid, ill-educated, dimwitted babies stand or kneel from here on out is immaterial. They’ve already shown us what they think. Once you put politics into something that’s not political, you’ve ruined it for all time. Are you really going to eat an ice cream sundae with only one small piece of dog shit in it? Of course not. And you’re not going to go back to the restaurant that served you a dog shit sundae. Not long ago, we didn’t care what the players believed in as long as they played the game and kept their idiotic political beliefs out of it. But the Baltimore Ravens did their stupid “Hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, and then Colin Kaepernick did his kneeling trick with the pigs as cops socks, and then everyone started kneeling. The players told us what they really thought about the country that made them millions of dollars, and we decided that we didn’t have much in common with them after all. The players cheated on football with politics. As the aggrieved husband, how do you forgive that? Most of us can’t. Or won’t. Even if the players do decide to make the basic gesture of respect we expect from our schoolchildren during the Pledge of Allegiance, we all know it’s a sham, that they’re performing under protest. Either fire them all and start anew with players who possess a basic modicum of gratitude, or celebrate the NFL’s slide into irrelevance.

Once Social Justice Warriors change a thing they don’t like, they don’t immediately become that thing’s greatest fans. They’re locusts: they ruin the work of other people, leave the wreckage, and move on to ruin something else. Name one thing that’s benefited from Social Justice meddling, from movies to television to literature (including/especially horror) to comic books to professional sports: you can’t. The opposite of inserting politics into a beloved thing is not putting in more politics from the other side: it’s taking the politics out. It’s depoliticizing it. That’s what I fight for in the culture wars: the removal of politics.

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During a recent illness I binge-watched the Amazon program Patriot. This is Good TV. It’s got a couple of filler episodes, scenes to make up expected runtime and season length, but overall it’s a lot of fun. Kurtwood Smith steals the show as Leslie except when Terry O’Quinn steals it as Tom. The humor runs from the subtle to the hysterical, and the main character, John Lakeman (played by Michael Dorman) is riveting to watch. His dissolution is slow, even agonizing, without the overdone moralistic drama-queening that too often colors such programs. Do you like in-depth information about moving an entity from Point A to Point B? Espionage without political sucker punches? Roshambo experts and attache badges? That’s Patriot.

Over the last ten days or so I’ve been dealing with an illness that has taken both antibiotics and steroids to return me to a semblance of health, so during that time I watched a good bit of television (in-between chills, cold sweats, massive headaches, and numerous other symptoms too tedious to describe). In the interest of making my recent unpleasantness a learning experience, I will review what I watched as I lay shivering on the couch.

Travelling Salesman: At the risk of sounding pretentious and lah-di-dah, I will label this movie an “intellectual thriller.” Not that non-intellectual thrillers aren’t entertaining; I liked John Wick and The Accountant, for example. Anyway, what makes Travelling Salesman an intellectual thriller is how much of the film takes place in a single room, focused on a conversation. Sounds boring, right? It’s not. What they’re talking about is an amazing thing they’ve done under contract to the U.S. government: they’ve solved one of the most difficult problems mathematics has available, and now must deal with the repercussions. The mathematician characters all act according to type: the stuffy professor complete with sweater vest, the quirky weirdo, the brilliant slob, and the wunderkind star who did most of the work. Everyone perfectly cast, particularly the government functionary who comes to negotiate the remainder of their contract: a smooth-talking, blandly handsome man who’s obviously over his head yet still tries to hold his own in a room of literal geniuses. Aside from a few incomprehensible bits it’s a great film, one that I enjoyed immensely. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Zero Theorem: It’s a kind of spiritual successor to Terry Gilliam’s earlier film Brazil, though utterly lacking Brazil‘s heart. Sharing the same bizarre, surreal aesthetic, it attempts to handle heavy themes like faith, purpose in life, and existential crisis, but fails to elevate any of them. Christoph Waltz does a good enough job with what he’s been given, making him the only thing in the movie worth watching. Matt Damon, despite his camouflage suits, doesn’t add anything. Everyone else is forgettable, particularly the love interest. I wanted to like it because I loved Brazil, but couldn’t. 2 out of 5 stars.

Travelers: A Netflix series of twelve episodes, it has a familiar premise: people from a future dystopia mentally time-travel to the present day, take over the bodies of people who are about to die, and work like heck to prevent the horrible events of the future from occurring. Been there, done that, right? Yes, but somehow this works. Part of it is the casting: everyone’s very, very good, including Eric McCormack, who pulls off his role with just enough humor and weakness to make himself believable. The stand-out performance is Jared Abrahamson, a teenager taken over by a much older time-traveler who, to his great credit, doesn’t do a George Burns impression from the movie 18 Again!. Even though Travelers doesn’t reveal its secrets until rather late in the series, which gets frustrating, there’s still a lot to like. If we don’t know the stakes, we can’t be depended on to care about what happens; nevertheless, each episode still manages to make itself an entertaining experience. The crew makes the best of a relatively low budget through acting, writing, and heart. And yes, it obviously takes place in Vancouver. It’s okay. You get used to it. 4 out of 5 stars.